Stanley Fisher embarrassed himself and the Fed today by regurgitating the standard Fed threat to raise rates in 2016. The Fed officials are starting to sound like that teacher on the Peanuts cartoon:
We are close to our targets,” Fischer said in a speech at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado on Sunday. “Looking ahead, I expect GDP growth to pick up in coming quarters, as investment recovers from a surprisingly weak patch and the drag from past dollar appreciation diminishes,” he added, without giving explicit views on his rate outlook. LINK
Someone needs to put a muzzle on these guys. The economy is meeting the Fed’s goal of what, creating the lowest labor force participation rate in history? I have to believe the Fed is looking at the real economic data reports and not the seasonally manipulated annualized rate garbage fed to us by the likes of the Government, auto industry and housing industry. Retail sales, including and especially restaurant sales, are declining and possibly on the verge of collapsing. Same with housing. I have been reviewing the real data in-depth in my weekly Short Seller’s Journal.
It’s especially funny that Fisher is bragging about a strong in economy from his perch at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado. Why? Because Aspen real estate is collapsing: Brokers At A Loss To Explain Sudden, Precipitous Drop In Aspen Real Estate: (LINK)
High-end sales that fuel Aspen’s $2 billion-a-year real estate market are evaporating, pushing Pitkin County’s sales volume down more than 42 percent to $546.45 million for the first half of the year from $939.91 million in the same period of 2015
I was just in Aspen two weeks ago. I wandered into the Ralph Lauren store and it was a morgue. The salesperson was hounding me like a starving wild animal. It was uncomfortable.
I’d love to see the Fed hike rates next month at their next FOMC circus. In fact, hike them 50 basis points instead of the gratuitous one-quarter of one percent they teased us with at the end of 2015. A rate hike might finally put the hammer on Clinton’s Presidential aspirations. We already can see that her supporters could give a shit about her psychopathic criminal behavior.
Fisher apparently thinks the Fed has “neared its goals” for the economy. If he thinks falling housing, retail and auto sales – combined with shrinking jobs market – are worth goals, hell raise rates 1%.
The the truth is that the only goal the Fed has accomplished is an almost daily delivery of good belly-laugh.
The election is very close and raising rates now would be risky but to save its credibility the Fed could raise by the expected piddly one quarter of one percent. It can use its endless reserves to put a floor under the market. Just kill the vix, prop the ES_F and CL_F futures and voila! Plus the msm and politicians will reinforce the false narrative of a strong economic recovery.
The Fed can’t temper or counter the effects of raising 25 basis points.
So they won’t do it.
They have no credibility with anyone who knows what an interest rate is.
Good post, Dave. My latest:
https://antoniusaquinas.com/2016/08/22/a-date-which-will-live-in-infamy-president-nixons-decision-to-abandon-the-gold-standard/
AA
I posted this recently, but since this article focuses on Fed bullshit-speak I will post it again. https://www.frbatlanta.org/news/speeches/2016/0816-lockhart-knoxville-gauging-current-economic-momentum.aspx
I don’t know how these ass-hat clowns can live with themselves…unless they are 99.9% self-delusional.
Charlatans and fools, is what they are, but of course we live in bizarro world where the idiocy they study and theorize over, is actually put into practice. Academiots is what they are.
I’m hoping they raise rates so the whole absurdity posing as markets unravels and crashes, and we can rid ourselves of these idiots for good.